Towards a Restructuration of the Conventional SWOT Analysis

Abstract

Today, the use of SWOT analysis is increasingly popular for the strategic planning of businesses. However, we argue that a traditional and conventional way of approaching the SWOT analysis contains an interpretative mistargeting which, in the background, derives from the absence of a comprehensive evolutionary methodological framework. Therefore, a conventional SWOT analysis that articulates lists of strengths-weaknesses and opportunities-threats in an absolute and non-correlative way is probably inappropriate to give answers to the needs of strategic planning. In this direction, by also exploring elements from the criticism to the traditional SWOT analysis, we counter-propose a new conceptual framework that perceives SWOT analysis in a correlative and evolutionary way, for all the kinds of socioeconomic organisms.

Keywords: conventional SWOT analysis, correlative/evolutionary SWOT analysis, strategic analysis/synthesis